Intercalation and the rechargeable Li battery

H2 and positive ion storage in solids are related to a process called intercalation which is exploited in current research for the development of composite electrodes for Li rechargeable batteries. 

Kozawa [609] was among the first to discuss MnC 2-Li intercalation clearly as a one-phase process, and to recognise the full significance of this concept in electro-chemistry he argued explicitly that reversibility is linked to the existence of a single-phase redox cycle. 

more complex composite materials suitable for battery electrodes, such as LiNii j/Co /02 are discussed by Menetrier et al. [610] and by Delmas et al. [611]. They offer the opportunity to optimise the host structure by varying the composition. There exists a wide variety of such materials of both amorphous and crystalline forms [612] as well as more open spinel structures [613] which possess well-interconnected interstitial sites. These are important to ensure the highest mobility of the Li+ ions over the whole of the redox cycle. As already mentioned, 

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